Iranian-British BBC journalist turned away from US

A BBC journalist was stopped from boarding a plane to the US because of her dual British and Iranian nationality.

Rana Rahimpour, a presenter for the BBC’s Persian service, was told she could not travel to the US on Tuesday, because of the new visa waiver rules that prevent those with dual nationalities of certain countries from entering the US on its 90-day visa-free program.

Rahimpour tweeted an image of her crying next to her child following the news.

The new travel restrictions were passed into law by Congress in December, as a reaction to the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino.

The new law, HR158, led the US ambassadors of 28 EU states to write a letter in The Hill in December, warning this could lead to retaliations.

“Such indiscriminate action against the more than 13 million European citizens who travel to the US each year would be counterproductive, could trigger legally-mandated reciprocal measures, and would do nothing to increase security while instead hurting economies on both sides of the Atlantic,” they said.

“A blanket restriction on those who have visited Syria or Iraq, for example, would most likely only affect legitimate travel by businesspeople, journalists, humanitarian or medical workers while doing little to detect those who travel by more clandestine means overland,” it read.